The Wireless Operator—With the U. S. Coast Guard/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII
The Rescue
UNDER other circumstances the captain’s words would have caused Henry to shout with joy. Now there was no sense of jubilation in his heart. He was stunned by the awful catastrophe that had occurred. Nine men that he had been living with, and had come to like, had suddenly been wiped out of existence. The horror of it had laid hold upon every soul on the Iroquois. Perhaps it was fortunate for those still left on the ship that there was so much to be done. There was no time for brooding, or mourning for lost comrades. The roar of the storm in the darkness was terrifying. The winds still were shrieking through the cordage. Enormous waves were sweeping down on the sturdy little cutter, threatening to overwhelm her. Only a bit of iron, a length of chain, stood between the Iroquois and a fate like that of the Capitol City; and a chain is no stronger than its weakest link. There might be a weak link in the chain of the Iroquois. Her work must be ended and the little ship taken out of danger as quickly as possible. Every soul on board felt this distinctly. Perhaps no one felt it more strongly than Henry did. The unaccustomed violence of the sea appalled him. So the office that had come to him so suddenly did not for a moment seem to him to be a matter of personal advancement. It was a call to duty. It was his chance to help forward the work the Iroquois had set out to do.
Very sober was Henry as he reëntered the radio shack. “Belford,” he said, “the captain thinks my experience as an operator will make me useful on the Iroquois until Mr. Sharp can get aboard again. He has asked me to take charge of the wireless room. I did not want to do it, for you should be in charge. But the captain has asked me to help, and all I can do is to obey. You’ll help me, won’t you, Belford? You’ll pull with us, won’t you? We’ve got to work together and do our best or we may never get out of this situation.”
“Of course, I’ll help you. Don’t give the matter another thought. I’ll help you just as loyally as I would help Mr. Sharp,” and the lad held out his hand.
“Thank you, Belford,” said Henry, grasping his hand. “The wireless will mean a lot to the Iroquois in the next twenty-four hours. We’ll both stand by the captain to the finish.” Then he added: “Where’s Black? I want to talk to him, too.”
“I wonder where he is,” said Belford. “I can’t remember seeing him for several hours past. Mr. Sharp was on watch the first four hours after we left Boston, and I stood watch the next four. Black ought to be on duty now. But there’s been so much excitement I never thought about whose watch it was.”
“You don’t suppose he went in one of the boats, do you?” asked Henry.
“No, I don’t,” said Belford. “And yet he might. I’ll see.”
He went to the stateroom. Soon he reappeared with a peculiar expression on his face. “He’s in bed,” he said, “and has been abed all the while we’ve been trying to save the Capitol City.”
The two young operators looked at each other. The same sickening suspicion was in the mind of each. But both hesitated to put it into words.
At that moment the quartermaster entered the room. “The captain wants you to talk to the Capitol City,” he said, “and find out how fast she is taking water, and how deep it is where she lies.”
“You do that,” said Henry to his companion. “You’ve had lots of experience with the blinkers. I haven’t had any.”
Young Belford set the blinkers to winking merrily. The response was immediate. Colored lights began to flash aloft on the Capitol City’s yardarm. That vessel was resting easily on the sands, came the answer, and was taking in water no faster than her pumps could pump it out again. The tide was rising rapidly. It was already six feet deep. This news the assistant operator carried to the commander.
“We'll save her yet,” said the captain. “This tide is going to be a very high one, if I am any judge. The wind’s been blowing the water shoreward now a full twenty-four hours.”
Rapidly the water rose. As the captain had said, the wind had been blowing it shoreward for a full day. The ebb tide had shown what the wind could do, for the water was far higher than usual when the tide turned to flood. Wind and wave both pressed the flood landward, and now the tide, running in with the wind, mounted and mounted until it was evident that the captain’s hope was to be realized. As the tide rose and the water about the cutter deepened, Captain Hardwick put a leadsman to sounding.
“We must work in with the tide, Lieutenant,” he said to his assistant on the bridge, “and be ready for action the instant the tide is at flood. It won’t wait a second for us, though, if this wind holds, it will delay the ebb. We must not lose a moment.”
Long before the tide was full, Captain Hard-=wick ordered the anchor-chain released. At once the cutter began to move toward the beach, very slowly at first, then faster and faster as wind and wave gave her momentum. The lead was kept going incessantly, the leadsman shouting the depths up to the bridge as he made his soundings. Foot by foot, fathom by fathom, the Iroquois drew nearer the Capitol City. Steadily the cutter’s searchlight played on the disabled ship, its brilliant beam boring through the inky dark.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, yet none the less truly, the wind abated its violence. Less often the great waves swept over the deck of the stranded steamship. Not so shrill was the screeching of the Iroquois’ cordage. The captain, with his wide experience, had evidently foreseen a change in the weather. He was evidently expecting the wind to fall, and if it did, it would help in the effort to float the stranded vessel, for a great pressure against the ship would be removed. But as the minutes passed, the wind did not become noticeably less. It still howled angrily, and swept with fitful force over ship and wave. Now it came in gusts, blowing furiously for a time, then lulling. But without ceasing the tide drove in, and the waves crept further and further up the sides of the stranded steamship, and the combers crashed ever higher up the sandy beach.
Fathom after fathom the Iroquois followed the rising tide shoreward. When the lead showed questionable depths, the anchor-chain was made fast,and the little cutter paused for a while in her progress, marking time, as it were, to the music of the storm. With unwonted rapidity the tide mounted up, and Captain Hardwick followed it as fast and as far as he dared.
Plainly there was a good chance to save the Capitol City. As the two ships came closer, every detail of the stranded ship was visible. She had suffered astonishingly little, when the violence of the storm was considered. She lay almost on an even keel. Though not pointing directly to the waves, the stern was so nearly in line with them that they were parted as they reached her, sweeping past with little damage to her hull. A section of her taffrail was gone, and a part of her rudder was broken off. Otherwise she appeared to have suffered little, and the success of the pumps in keeping down the water in the hold showed that even her plates had not been badly started. Her superstructure had suffered little. One of her small boats had been washed away, but otherwise she seemed to the watchers on the Iroquois to be in remarkably good condition.
What was more important, her crew was intact. Huddled high on the bridge and in the rigging, they had crouched together while the men from the Iroquois were trying to reach them. But as the tide ran low, those in the rigging had climbed down and mounted to the bridge and superstructure, seeking warmth, for the piercing winds had well-nigh frozen them as they clung to the rattling stays. Apparently not a man had been swept from the Capitol City. Almost the full crew was there to work the ship, and Captain Hardwick was glad, indeed, that there was no such shortage of hands on the Capitol City as existed on the Iroquois. There would be work for many hands when the time was ripe for the effort he had in mind.
At last the Iroquois came within reach of her stranded sister. Now a line could easily be fired across the helpless vessel. Ready was the faking-box with the shot-line faked neatly on the tall spindles within it, ready to run out smoothly as it traveled through the air on its momentous journey. The little brass gun on the after-rail of the Iroquois was uncovered, a charge was inserted in it, its Camden projectile, with shot-line bent fast, projected from the muzzle of the little gun, and all was ready for the effort. The captain himself sighted the little gun, for the gunner, alas! had been in the Iroquois’ surfboat. A moment the commander waited, until the cutter rode on an even keel.
“Fire,” he called.
There was a loud explosion, the night was stabbed with a sheet of flame, and the projectile went hurtling out and up, tearing its way across the hundreds of yards of raging sea that still separated the two ships. For an instant those on board the Iroquois were blinded by the flash of their gun. Then they tried to trace, in the glare of the searchlight, the flight of the shot-line. Straight and true it winged its way toward the stranded ship. Then a rush of scurrying forms on the Capitol City told the watchers on the Iroquois that the shot had carried true. In a moment more the crew of the Capitol City were hauling in the little shot-line.
Already a heavier line had been bent to the end of the light shot-line, but first it had been passed out through one of the quarter chocks. Steadily the crew of the Capitol City drew this heavier line aboard their craft. This in turn was followed by a heavy hawser. But Captain Hardwick had no intention of risking defeat through the use of so uncertain a towing line as a manila hawser. He meant to make fast to the Capitol City with a wire cable. To that end young Belford had been busy with the blinkers, and the flashing lights of the Capitol City’s yardarm had answered back. Captain Hardwick had apprised his fellow-commander of his intention, and warned him of the necessity of heaving the heavy wire cable an inch at a time, as it was paid out cautiously by the Iroquois. No buoyancy had this line, like a manila hawser. Like a plummet it would drop to the bottom of the sea, and once it started to run, out it would go its full length.
Steadily the rope hawser was paid out, and steadily it was pulled aboard the Capitol City. Then the end of the wire cable, bent to the hawser, was lowered, and foot by foot, with a caution hardly credible, the handful of men on the Iroquois responded to the tug on the line and let the wire cable slide through the quarter chock. At the same time Captain Hardwick drifted the Iroquois closer and closer to the vessel on the shoals.
At last the steel cable was aboard the Capitol City, and safe about her bitts. The other end was now made fast to the bitts of the Iroquois. The great, unbreakable, steel cable now stretched from ship to ship. With all the power at her command, the little cutter would presently strain at this line. At this same time she would heave in her anchor-chain, and the vast length of this enormous chain, reaching hundreds of fathoms out into the ocean, and weighing tons upon tons, would add to the anchor a gripping force that would hold like the rock of Gibraltar. Like a man pulling himself up a rope, arm over arm, the little cutter would heave itself along the length of this anchor-chain with the full power of both its propeller and its heaving engine, and behind it would come the Capitol City—perhaps.
Time alone would tell. And now all was ready. Steam was up on both ships, ready for the supreme effort. It remained only for the tide to reach flood, but how slowly it now seemed to advance. Up and up it rose, creeping higher and higher up the sides of the stranded ship, the lacy edges of the waves foaming ever higher on the sandy beach. Anxiously the captain kept his watch. Now, with careful eye, he studied the heavens. Now he bent his gaze upon the tumultuous sea. Now he went forward, and with his own hands examined the anchor-chain and looked at all its mechanism for heaving. Again he went aft and studied the arrangement of the hawser, appraising with practised eye the lay of the two vessels, the sweep of the waves, the movement of the tide.
High indeed this was, and as the water mounted ever higher on the Capitol City’s side, and the leadsman found more and more depth beneath the Iroquois, the captain’s face showed ever-growing confidence. From time to time he talked with the master of the Capitol City, with young Belford as his intermediary. Anon he studied the skies and noted with satisfaction the steady abatement of the wind. As the time drew near for the tide to be at flood, the eager commander paced the deck, impatient for the trial. Yet with eagle eye he watched the tide. At last the critical moment arrived. The commander’s judgment told him it was time to be moving. The tide was not yet quite at flood, but it was high, extremely high. It would not mount much higher. When it turned, the very volume of it would cause it to run out fast.
Briskly he mounted to the bridge. “Tell the Capitol City were going to move,” he called to the radio man. “Tell the captain to put on full speed astern.”
Above, the blinker lights flashed forth their calls, and promptly from the Capitol City came answering flashes. The ship would turn on her power. Meantime the indicator in the engine room of the Iroquois communicated its message to the men at the engines. The propeller began to move, slowly at first, then faster, then at full speed. Forward, the heaving engine began to strain at the anchor-cable. The little cutter trembled and shook with the effort. Loud rumbled the churning machinery in her hold.
Minute followed minute. The little craft strained and pulled. She rose and fell in the sea. Her propeller churned the waters into yeasty foam. Link by link the anchor-chain was heaved in. Foot by foot the Iroquois crept ahead,, but she was only making the wire cable taut. The Capitol City had not budged. Glasses to eyes, the captain studied the great steamer as her propeller drove round and round in the swirling water. Critically he watched the waves sweep past her sides, for continually the glaring light of the Iroquois was focused on the helpless steamer. Still the tide rose higher, though now but slowly. Every inch counted now. A few more inches and the vessel on the sands ought almost to float of herself.
On deck the sailors watched the tide with anxious eyes. Well they knew what a little more water would mean to the success of their efforts. From time to time they dropped bits of wood over the sides, to see whether the tide was still carrying toward the shore. Anon they studied the wire cable now stretched tighter than a fiddle-string. The tide continued to rise, though now almost imperceptibly. Then it hesitated, halted, and stood still. It was at flood. With every ounce of power they possessed the two steamships strained and struggled. The tide paused, as though to give them ample opportunity. Then, almost imperceptibly, it turned and began to flow out toward the sea. And at that instant the lights on the Capitol City flashed forth, and a moment later young Belford came racing up to the bridge with a message for the captain.
“The Capitol City is moving,” he said. Then he turned and raced back to his post.
A shout went up as the sailors sensed the import of his message. Every eye was focused on the stranded steamer. For a moment no motion was discernible in her. Then plainly she could be seen to move. The shout was followed by a cheer, for now the big steamer was plainly ploughing through the waves. Little by little she gained momentum. Moment by moment the Iroquois drove ahead faster. But it was no easy task that faced her. No tractable tow was this behind her. With broken rudder, and advancing stern foremost, the Capitol City yawed badly. Nevertheless, she came on behind the Iroquois, as the latter forged ahead, heaving in her anchor-chain fathom after fathom, and fighting her way out to the depths.
By the time the anchor was heaved aboard, the wind had lessened markedly. No longer was it blowing from the east. It was shifting, working around to the north. The tide now was running out strong. There was no danger that either wind or tide would carry the rescued vessel back to the shoals again. When the captain of the Iroquois judged it to be safe, he stopped the cutter. With great care the crew of the Capitol City shifted the towing cable from stern to bow, and made it fast to the forward bitts. When this was done, the Iroquois pointed her nose into the wind, gradually got under way, and with the disabled steamer behind her, headed once more for the city of Paul Revere. It was the nearest harbor in which the crippled vessel could find refuge.